


Wide-eyed sunshine (gonna catch a bit of)

by space_canada



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Olympics, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-08
Updated: 2013-06-09
Packaged: 2017-12-14 08:09:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/834626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/space_canada/pseuds/space_canada
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Beijing 2008, and Phil Coulson, 19, has been critiqued, analysed and then unanimously labelled as the underdog of Olympic triathlon. It doesn't bother him. What does bother him is the dangerously young, dangerously arrogant gymnast in the room upstairs, and the fact that Phil can't stop sneaking him chocolate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> A while ago, I was browsing Tumblr and I came across a post that referenced Taylor Phinney (cyclist) and Shawn Johnson (gymnast) and their friendship in Beijing, and suggested a translation of this into a C/C Avengers setting. 
> 
> I tried to get the idea out of my head and failed dismally. This is the result.
> 
> If anyone recognises this, and minds that I've hijacked the idea, I apologise - it's completely down to me and my inability to bookmark, and I'm happy to take the fic down :) 
> 
> I would go on to apologise for the fact that this fic is kind of ridiculous and that large sections of words are essentially just a love song to triathlon, but I find it hard to be sorry because it was alarmingly fun to write *g*

_Prologue..._

In every Olympic games, no matter the year, no matter the city, there are always moments that stand out.

For Phil Coulson, eleven years old and out-growing himself, the Sydney 2000 summer Olympics brings the moment that stands out most of all. In Sydney Opera House, 48 women and 52 men gather and over two days in mid-September, triathlon makes its Olympic debut.

Phil, by that point already a seasoned runner, and somewhat enthusiastic cyclist, watches from his living room carpet and decides there and then that one day, he’ll be on that podium.

At least, that’s the story that he tells in interviews nowadays, when asked why he took up triathlon. The truth is that it started much earlier than eleven years old and itchy in your own skin.

It started with a misplaced baseball (Phil’s), a bruised head (Billy’s), and a half-mile pursuit through the neighbourhood where both of them, to Phil’s detriment, lived. Phil was seven, Billy was nine and by the time Phil got good enough at fleeing, he had been the recipient of three black eyes and his mother was starting to think he was pathologically clumsy and perhaps should see a doctor.

So the running started as fleeing and by the time Phil got sick enough of fleeing that he took up martial arts lessons instead (he repaid Billy every single bruise), the running was a habit and it stuck.

Phil got the bike for his tenth birthday. He’s unsure to this day how his mother, who works as a nurse, afforded it, but despite the lack of gears, liberal coating of rust and sulky reluctance to stop, he never thought to be anything other than stupidly proud of it. It took a considerable amount of sandpaper, olive oil (looking back now he cringes at the thought) and elbow grease, but eventually the bike was rideable. That’s not to say it wasn’t permanently stuck in one gear and didn’t like to make alarming clanking noises, but it went forward and that was all that mattered.

Phil still has it in storage today.

And that was that. Eleven years old, runner, cyclist, future Olympic medallist. All that was needed was a plan and fortunately for Phil, even as a child, planning was kind of his thing. 


	2. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Notes on triathlon specific stuff at the end, for anyone who is interested :)

Chapter 1...

Beijing both is and isn’t exactly what Phil expected. It’s hot, the atmosphere muggy and close – although to Phil not warranting of the panicked hype over air conditions – and it’s loud and just so damn _big._ Phil is no stranger to cities; he’s done a fair bit of travelling these last two years, but this is in another class. He grew up in ‘the city that never sleeps’ but in comparison to Beijing, New York seems almost lazy. The city feels as though it’s expanding in all directions, up to skyscrapers, down to subways, left and right and every which way until all there is is one giant blot of humanity. It seems as though nothing and no-one can ever go unobserved and Phil feels a little as though the city is even trying to grow inside him, to take what space is left there.

It’s disconcerting and he finds himself glad that the Athlete’s Village is separate from the bustle of the city, the competitors sequestered away in luxury high-rise accommodation purpose-built for the occasion.

Phil’s sharing an apartment with three other members of USA Triathlon. Sitwell is 22, three years older than Phil, and the best swimmer on the squad. Phil’s known him for a good number of years now; he’d like to think they’re friends as well as colleagues and he’s glad that they got to come to Beijing together. Then there’s Maria Hill – their sole female qualifier. There’s not much to be said about Maria that can’t be summarised by, she’s good. She’s very good. And she told them on the plane over here that if they’re going to posture around calling each other by their surnames, then from now on, she’ll be Hill, thank you very much sirs. Phil likes her.

And last, last but definitely not least, there’s the poster boy of USA Triathlon. Steve Rogers, referred to in the press as ‘Captain America’, thanks to the completely un-ironic stars and stripes on his trisuit. He qualified for the Olympics in a storm of glory; two-time World Triathlon Champion, gold at the Pan American Continental Qualifier, ranked second overall in the ITU rankings. There’s a very real chance he could win gold at this Games, and Phil knows that their team strategy, drilled into them like breathing by this point, is heavily geared towards optimising the chances of that happening.

The thing about Steve Rogers is that he’s Phil’s childhood hero. He’s four years older than Phil, was busily storming his way through the world of junior triathlon when Phil was just starting out, and Phil admired him – the stroke of his swim, the technique of his run and, yes, the insane breadth of his shoulders – but then he watched Steve make his senior triathlon debut at Blenheim Park. Prior to the event, there’d been a lot of unflattering speculation about whether or not this junior superstar could hack it in the senior world and Phil imagines that the pressure on him to succeed was enormous. But succeed he did – he was well up after the swim, further up after the cycle and by the time the halfway stage of the run was reached, there were only two other athletes that looked like they had anything other than a snowball’s chance in hell of catching him. It was, to say the least, a quite remarkable performance.

But then, at the 9 km mark, somehow (and no one seems to know quite how) the man in second place tripped. Phil can still remember the unpleasant visual – living proof that nobody’s ankle can bend at a right angle without several key anatomical structures giving way very suddenly. The snap of the bone breaking was excruciatingly loud, and the athlete fell in the middle of the road, skin blanched bone white and hands hovering around his ankle as though he wanted to grip it, keep it safe, but instinctively knew touching it would be a seriously bad plan.

This on its own would have been drama enough, but the entire incident was compounded by the reactions of his two fellow competitors. The man in third place, an infinitely unpleasant German athlete called Schmidt, surprised the crowd by trampling all over the concept of sportsmanship and running straight past, headed for the finish line without a backward glance. The murmurs of disapproving surprise turned into outright gasps of shock, however, when Steve Rogers, not far enough ahead to have missed what had happened, took one look at Schmidt running towards him and _turned around_. He ran all the way back to the fallen athlete, crouched down, put his hand on the other man’s shoulder and _stayed with him_ , talking quietly, until the paramedics arrived.

Schmidt won gold, Steve Rogers came in ninth. He also became, to both Phil and the interested body of the American public, something of a hero.

Phil’s best friend from high school accused him of having a ‘hard-on for Captain America’. This was not strictly accurate. It’s not that Phil would have said no, if Rogers ever (in some strange fantasy parallel world) offered, but more that he saw in Steve characteristics that he admired and wanted to emulate.

“So,” his friend had said, when Phil had attempted to explain this. “You don’t want to do Captain America, you want to _be_ him?”

As cringe-worthy a way of phrasing it as that was, it is essentially, the essence of the matter. And it made things more than slightly awkward when, after years of four am starts at the pool, gruelling transition training and torture disguised as sports massage, Phil suddenly found that he was _good_. He’d flown under the radar as a junior, placing in the top ten of most races he entered, but by the time he turned 18 and was ready to race with the seniors, he had yet to win a race. This didn’t particularly worry him; he knew he’d get there because he’d made that decision when he was eleven, but the 2008 Olympics seemed so unattainable that qualifying for them didn’t even enter his head, especially not when it was his only his first year in senior competition.

He watched as Steve Rogers took gold at the Pan American Continental Olympic Qualifier and as race by race Jasper Sitwell steadily climbed the ITU rankings. Then the World Triathlon Championships, the last event of 2008 at which you could earn points to qualify for the Olympic team, rolled around and both Rogers and Sitwell, by now both shoe-ins for the team, announced that they would not be competing. Sitwell had injured his calf in a previous race and wanted to rest, Rogers stated personal reasons.

And so it came down to it that all American hopes for a men’s World Champion rested solely on Phil’s shoulders. It was almost laughable, and the press reaction was less than favourable. Phil, with little choice at this point, gritted his teeth, got on with it and produced a personal best – if he’s honest, a distinct ‘fuck you’ to the multitude of people who had expressed doubt at his talent and dedication to the sport.  He didn’t win, because this is real life, but he came in second (to Schmidt, of all people) and amassed a considerable number of qualification points.

Nice as this was, it didn’t mean much, because Phil was far enough down the ITU rankings that even if he’d won, he wouldn’t have qualified for the Olympics. And that, as they say, was that.

Or at least, it would have been, had it not been for the Tripartite Commission. The Tripartite Commission, every Olympics, was allowed to allocate one final place, with the official purpose of allowing an under-represented country or well-deserving athlete a chance. With Phil as far down the rankings as he still was, and both Sitwell and Rogers already qualified for the US men’s team, Phil fitted into neither of these categories. Yet somehow, crawling back into his apartment one evening after training, he finds a message on his answering phone inviting him to meet with the Commission. Phil isn't stupid. He goes.

“We’re giving the Tripartite place to you,” says a frankly terrifying man wearing an eye-patch.

“Why?” Phil asks, too shocked to be tactful.

A dissatisfied murmur rumbles through the rest of the Commission. Phil gets the feeling this is far from a unanimous decision.

“Because you’re good,” says Eye-Patch Man. “Not spectacular, but unlike a lot of the athletes I see out there today, you’ve got the drive to get somewhere.”

“Oh,” Phil says.

Eye-Patch Man narrows his eyes.

“Thank you,” Phil adds belatedly, feeling a bit as though someone has just thumped him square across the jaw with a baseball bat.

After that, there’s a blur of forms and paperwork and shaking the hands of every member of the Commission and receiving their (95% blatantly insincere) congratulations. When it’s all over, Phil is left standing in the corridor outside the meeting room, clutching a sheaf of forms and wondering what the hell just happened. He stands there for so long that Eye-Patch Man, now wearing a _long leather coat_ , dear God in heaven, comes out and almost barrels into him.

He eyes Phil for a moment and then offers him his hand.

“Nick Fury.”

Somehow it doesn’t seem odd that Phil is only just learning his name. He shakes the hand offered and deliberately doesn’t wince. Fury’s eyebrow twitches.

“Thanks,” Phil finds himself saying again, a bit more genuinely this time, “for this.”

“A blind man could see your dedication to this sport,” Fury says, and Phil has to repress the horribly inappropriate urge to make a joke about the eye patch. Fury’s mouth twitches, as though he’s reading Phil’s mind. “Don’t let me down, Coulson, you hear me?”

“No,” Phil says, and then, because it seems somehow appropriate, “I won’t, sir.”

Fury doesn’t comment on his somewhat mortifying use of the honorific. He just nods, turns on his heel and strides off down the corridor, leather coat (seriously?) flapping behind.

 ‘ _Holy shit,’_ Phil remembers thinking, ‘ _holy shit, I’m going to the Olympics_.’

And that is how he ended up in an apartment in Beijing, with three of America’s best triathletes, trying not to turn beetroot red every time Steve Rogers wanders around in a wifebeater, does press-ups in front of the TV, or hell, asks Phil to pass the salt, because, as Phil has to keep reminding himself, he is not a _star-struck child_ anymore.

Jasper and Maria, Sitwell and Hill, find this hilarious. As does the other current bane of Phil’s life, who can, incidentally, also be linked back to Steve.

All those years ago, at Blenheim Park, it turned out that the identity of the athlete with the broken ankle would turn out to be far more important to USA Triathlon than anyone expected. The unfortunate man was a young British athlete, name of Tom Jarvis, and while this in itself was irrelevant, the identity of Jarvis’ uncle could not be further from that.

“Stark,” Sitwell had proclaimed to Phil, when everything hit the news at the time, “his uncle is Tony Fucking Stark!”

It was interesting how often people used that curse in place of Stark’s middle name. In hindsight, having met the man, it should have been a clue. Tony Stark, aside from being Jarvis’ uncle, was also an American billionaire, with a fortune only outdone in size by his generosity. He had been entering negotiations to sponsor British Triathlon when his nephew, very sadly, was told his ankle would never be able to take the strain of high-level racing, and was forced to retire.

Instead of, as most people expected, going on to sponsor the British team anyway, Tony Stark lived up to his reputation for unpredictability and performed a complete 180 degree change of heart. USA Triathlon suddenly found they were boasting one of the most generous sponsors worldwide, and it was all down to the man who, in his first senior race, threw the gold medal in order to go back for Tony Stark’s nephew.

It was a nice story, Stark’s money was even nicer, but the man himself was an absolute nightmare, and just occasionally Phil, and he was sure, other members of the team, cursed Steve Rogers and the goodness of his heart.

Like now, for instance, just as Phil was contemplating getting up and indulging in a high-protein shake for dinner (he had to take a few deep breaths to stop himself getting too over-excited), his phone buzzed twice on the table.

The first message was from their team coach and read ‘ _Get here now, all of you, in five minutes, or I swear to God, we will no longer have a sponsor_. _I can’t murder him with witnesses._ ’

The second was from Stark and read, quite simply, ‘ _Assemble_ ’. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Qualification for Olympic triathlon is done (mostly) on a points-based system, where winning, or placing highly in certain races wins you qualifying points. These points contribute towards the International Triathlon Union (ITU) rankings, the highest-ranked athletes in which go on to be awarded places. The Tripartite Commission is a real thing, and they award one men's place and one women's every Olympics with the aim of making sure the field is an even representation of triathletes worldwide.


End file.
